


The Once and Future Snore

by hufflepirate



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Comfort, Couch Cuddles, Exhaustion, Fluff, Gen, Memories, Napping, cuddle puddle, snoring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 20:19:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10726494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: Allura and Coran think about the past.  Coran can't figure out how to tell Shiro he's as welcome to affection as all the younger paladins.  Everybody ends up in the same nap pile anyway.(Note: Everybody (on the main team) is in this, but I only individually tagged the people who do something besides trap Coran in the middle of a nap pile while he's too asleep to know how they got there.)





	The Once and Future Snore

**Author's Note:**

> This was not supposed to be a real fic, but then it got slightly longer and slightly more serious than intended so it's going up here instead of just as a microfic on tumblr. All I wanted was a cuddle puddle with Coran in the middle? Why did all these other feelings happen? Why am I like this?
> 
> Also this title might change when it's not almost 2 am and I'm not so tired. Also tagging might change but I'm too tired to think about tagging rn.

Coran was always working, always moving, right up until he wasn't. Allura had caught him stumbling to bed looking half-asleep already at least a dozen times, but she'd never caught him like this, sleeping upright on one of the couches outside the training deck, head lolling backward over the back. They'd all been pushing through exhaustion for days, but she'd genuinely started to believe that Coran was immune to all that, and realizing he wasn't just made her feel even more tired.

Biting her lip, she weighed the appropriateness of the impulse that had just occurred to her. It had been a long time since she'd curled up against Coran for a nap, even if she didn't count all those millennia of hypersleep.

She probably shouldn't. She was supposed to be growing up now, not a kid, and she was supposed to set a good example as a leader for the paladins. Coran let out a soft snore, a familiar noise she remembered from when she was young and he was running after her all the time, always a faithful and unescapable guardian even when she tricked and wriggled her way away from nurses and governesses like it was nothing.

She was afraid that if she closed her eyes, she'd fall asleep standing up, so she quit fighting it and curled onto the couch next to him, laying her head on his shoulder and leaning into his side. He didn't stir, sleeping as deeply as he always had, and before she could stop herself, she was out, too.

 

Coran woke up an hour later, pinned in on all sides. Allura was tucked against him on his right, and apparently his subconscious had recognized her, because his right arm was wrapped around her. Lance was snuggled up against him on the left, drooling gently into his shoulder in a way that shouldn't have been endearing, but would have been if his arm weren't also asleep from being trapped under the boy, tingling uncomfortably as Coran noticed it. Hunk had curled onto his side, draping his torso across Lance's lap so he could use Coran's thigh as a pillow, but he wasn't drooling, which was probably for the best.

Coran couldn't even move his legs. Not with Pidge asleep on the floor directly in front of him, still sitting upright and leaning back against his shins, and Keith beside her, nestled up against Allura's skirts and resting his temple heavily against Coran's right knee. Coran couldn't bend down to look at Keith and Pidge without jostling Lance and Allura too much, so he didn't, holding himself stock still and looking around with just his head.

Shiro was sitting on the floor in front of the couch across from them, half curled in on himself and leaning back against the seat of the other couch with his eyes half-lidded, almost but not quite asleep like the rest of them. He stared vaguely at them, like he wasn't fully seeing what was in front of him, until Coran moved his head again, nodding at the boy, and his eyes tracked the motion and opened fully again.

For a moment, there was silence between them, Coran buried in an affectionate pile of children and Shiro alone, and then Coran shifted slightly, uncomfortable. The paladins around him made soft noises and shifted in return, adjusting themselves against him, but didn't wake up. He moved his arm slightly, hoping to wake it up without waking Lance up. Shiro watched and Coran tried to think of what to say.

Finally, he just gave up on saying something smart. "Come on," he whispered, gesturing with his head to indicate that Shiro should come over, "I still have a whole empty knee. Or you could use Pidge as a pillow."

Shiro smiled, genuine but exhausted, and Coran was suddenly struck by how many of Shiro's smiles looked forced, now that he'd seen one that wasn't. Shiro nodded, wordlessly, and crawled over, not bothering to stand all the way up. He snuggled up into the remaining floor space, where Coran couldn't really see him without straining awkwardly. He couldn't get a hand free to pat Shiro on the head, so he nudged him affectionately with his leg instead, making Pidge grumble in her sleep. Shiro snorted, almost a laugh, and tipped his head back to look up at Coran. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but Coran could see whatever it was dying on his tongue. He was too tired to remember what he'd meant to say. They were all too tired to remember things, these days.

"Just relax," he whispered down to the Black Paladin, the leader of Voltron, the oldest of the children he was responsible for. "We still have time for a nap." Shiro nodded and closed his eyes, tucking his head more firmly against Coran's knee now that he had permission, and Coran realized, moments later, that Shiro snored when he slept sitting up.

He smiled, resting his head back against the back of the couch instead of bending to look at Allura and the paladins, and let his eyes close again as he remembered back to being young and snuggly himself. Alfor had always laughed at him for the way he snored when he slept upright, but it had never stopped his best friend from winding up equally asleep in the chair next to him, head tipping sideways as he snored even louder than Coran did.

Coran's mouth quirked upward. This tired, the paladins would probably even have slept through Alfor's log-sawing. He let himself drift off again, surrounded by a bunch of kids who loved him and the future they represented - a future that was just starting to make him feel hopeful again, actually hopeful, and not just pretend-hopeful for the princess's sake, for the first time in a long, long time.


End file.
